


Light Sailor - A Song Tale Challenge

by pherryt



Category: Science Fiction - Fandom
Genre: Left Behind - Freeform, Light Sailor, Mary Ellen Wessels, Pining, Seperation, Song Tale Challenge, mew - Freeform, science ficition, space travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-05
Updated: 2016-04-05
Packaged: 2018-05-31 09:28:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6464944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pherryt/pseuds/pherryt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A tale from the veiw point of a woman who had been left behind on Earth (by her choice) while her lover  went into space on a ship powered by Light Sails. A tale of heartbreak and possible reconciliation...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Light Sailor - A Song Tale Challenge

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written in response to a challenge back in the day (January 16th, 2005, to be exact, and originally published on Livejournal) to create a 'Song Tale'. 
> 
> Most of the people answering the challenge wrote songs. I went the opposite direction.
> 
> My answer was to take the song "Light Sailor" by Mary Ellen Wessels (aka MEW) and expand it, add a little bit more to it and see what I could make of it. It's a beautiful song, and I encourage you all to look it up. MEW sings and either her, or her husband is playing a Hammered Dulcimer which is MAD skill. 
> 
> I tried to thread the song lyrics into the story itself as well.
> 
> I hope you like it - I randomly remembered this just tonight and thought I'd post it, unedited. I credited another piece on this account as my first fanfiction ever. I accidentally lied, because this is.
> 
> I could not find a 'fandom' to place this under, but I had to put something. If anyone's got a better idea, please feel free to poke me with it.

_**Light Sailor -** Mary Ellen Wessels _  
  
_Out by the port, on an autumn night, she's come to watch the probes take flight._  
_Her eyes are dim now, and scan the deep, for a trail of fire, a trail of fire, to rouse her heart from sleep._  
  
_A strange young man, in explorer's white, drifts like a star, out in the night._  
_He stops before her, some steps away, she turns toward him. Turns toward him, to hear what he might say._  
  
_He says, "Believe, I mean no harm. Will you take my coat? Will you take my arm?"_  
_She says, "I just come here, to watch them fly. As someone once did, as someone once did, into the starry sky."_  
  
_"In the 30 years, he's been in space, my youth has long since left my face._  
_He flies near lightspeed, is lost to me, as if he'd vanished, as if he'd vanished, into the starry sea."_  
  
_"Please, tell no one you saw me here. They'd only laugh at me I fear._  
_I know the folly of wasted time. We made our choices, made our choices, and I will live with mine."_  
  
_He says, "You know, I was born in space. Our captain told us about this place._  
_Our light sail sundered, while outward bound. We turned her homeward, turned her homeward, and only now touched down."_  
  
_She says, "Light sails haven't flown in years. You've had your laugh, you've seen my tears!"_  
_He says, "Forgive me, you couldn't know. We left this planet, left this planet, some 30 years ago."_  
  
_She says "The gods love thievery. The stars from him, and him from me._  
_Still tell your captain, I'll meet him here, tomorrow morning. Tomorrow morning, when the sky is clear."_

*******************************************************

Her footsteps fell silently, swallowed by the grass and dead leaves she walked on. She topped the hill in practiced steps. She knew exactly how many to get to the top. She stood on the hilltop as she had for so many of her nights with the woods behind her, which tonight could be heard moving in the wind that is a part of autumn. In front of her, down a bit on the other side of the hill, was a tall chain link fence. Past the fence was the spaceport. Thirty years ago it had been so tiny, but it expanded in the intervening time as spaceflight got more and more advanced, easier and safer.  
  
She watched as one of the ships lifted from the ground and exploded upwards towards the clear night sky. Her eyes followed the trail it left until it disappeared into the stars. She felt the familiar ache in her heart as she watched it go. Never mind the fact that this one held no meaning to her, her mind had already gone back to the first time, when it  _had_  meant something. It had meant everything.  
  
Her reverie was broken. She was unsure what called her attention away from the sky and her memories, but then she saw him. A young man, dressed in an old style suit of white, seeming to glide over the grass. The white of the suit gleaming in the darkness. A suit like  _he_ had worn. She felt several emotions flicker through her as the young man slowly approached her. Another ache at the sight of the white uniform, a startlement that there was anyone else on this hill beside her, and also a fear that she was trespassing which would be the end of her starlight walks.  
  
He must have seen her confusion and fear on her face because he stopped and spoke slowly and softly as if to reassure her her. When she heard him, she knew he had mistaken the cause of her fear but she didn't enlighten him. Instead, she almost laughed aloud in relief at his words, the ones that said she wouldn't have to give up her walks. That was good. She concentrated on what he said and thought how his words were just a tad strange.  
  
"Believe, I mean no harm." He'd said, in his attempt to reassure her, then "Will you take my coat? Will you take my arm?" It took a few moments to realize what he was asking. This was definitely an odd, but polite way to ask - she spoke up quickly and pointed towards the spaceport below, while shaking her head sadly and apologetically.  
  
"I just come here to watch them fly." she said, loud enough to be heard without a problem. As she stared down at the ships she continued speaking, much lower so that if he did hear, he would have to strain to do so. "As someone once did, into the starry sky." She smiled sadly. The young man had only spoken once, but his strange way of talking seemed to set her mood perfectly. It was almost like poetry and she had always been enamored of poetry.  
  
_He_  had known that, so many years ago. The book he had given her she still treasured, worn though it was from years of reading. The young man stood quietly, a question he was too polite to ask obvious on his face. She gave another of her sad smiles and took pity on the young man. Still, she spoke quietly when she spoke.  
  
"In the thirty years he's been in space," Did she imagine a bit of a start when she said that? It must be her imagination. "My youth has long since left my face." He made as if to protest, but she smiled and motioned to him and he quieted before saying a word. "He flies near lightspeed, is lost to me...As if he'd vanished - as if he'd vanished, into the starry sea." She turned away again to stare once again at the stars as she spoke. She felt the ache grow a bit stronger due to bringing the past into words - whimsical, but solid words - for the first time in years.  
  
She turned back to him abruptly as a different fear gripped her, and the smile - sad as it was - fell from her face. "Please tell no one you saw me here." She begged, the confusion now showed on his face again rather plainly , but he once again refrained from asking. She was amazed at how polite he was, when the children and young adults of these current years were quite the opposite. She decided to reward his politeness and ease his curiosity, explaining herself...  
  
"They'd only laugh at me I fear. I know the folly of wasted time. We made our choices, " She paused and sighed, continuing in a softer voice yet again, "Made our choices, and I will live with mine..." she trailed off, her eyes misting over, the memories too thick to contain now as she thought back to the days before he'd left.  
  
She hadn't known when they met, and even after it was still uncertain. Spaceflight was still quite risky then, and expensive. She hadn't known that he was one of the many who wanted to fly out among the stars. Or that out of the many, he was one of the ones that had been screened and accepted. But even that smaller number was too big, and he had been waiting for his chance to go for years. There were only a few spaceflights per year, and the number of candidates grew faster then ships went out. And some candidates were unacceptable after enough time had passed.  
  
No, she hadn't known. Not at first, and it might have made the difference but it was too late by the time they fell in love. All she had known at first was that he loved the stars. They often went out on stargazing walks while reciting their favorite poems to each other. She hadn't known then that some of the poems of the stars he told her were his own. He had tried to describe his fascination for the stars, why he wanted to go travel among them, but she hadn't understood.   
  
Then one day he told her. She supposed she ought to have known. It was her luck. She had found what so few found....and he was going to leave her.  
  
There had been a way for them to stay together. He wasn't just a member of the crew, and he had a few privileges. If she had married him, she could have gone with him. After some training of course so she would at least be useful in some way...but she could have gone. She couldn't blame him for their separation. He had asked, had even begged, but in the end, he chose the stars over her when she refused.  
  
When he had talked of his love of the stars and his yearning to be out there among them, she not only hadn't understood, but had been frightened. She was deathly afraid of the coldness and emptiness. The thought of all the many things that could go wrong on the ships that went out. All the horrifying ways ...  
  
And he hadn't understood her fear, just as she hadn't understood him. They fought, almost viciously, over it. It was that, along with his love of the stars, that had him turn away from her. She had no one to blame but herself. She knew that by the time either of them could regret their actions, their words, it would be too late. He'd be gone with no way to come back, or to contact her. Certainly, when it was far too late to do either of the any good.   
  
The ache was growing unbearable and so was the silence, until the young man finally, after seeming to debate the wiseness of his action, interrupted her thoughts.  
  
"You know, I was born in space..." She looked over at him.  _Aaaah,_ she thought, as realization hit,  _That would account for the strange politeness he had_. "Our Captain told us about this place..."  _What?"_  She thought,  _has he never seen Earth before? No, that couldn't be..._  Apprehension flowed into her suddenly.  _Flights don't work that way anymore..._  "Our light sail sundered while outward bound. We turned her homeward- " He hesitated over the word homeward, as if it wasn't quite right to him, but said it again, as if to reinforce it, "Turned her homeward, and only now touched down."  
  
Her mind raced, and anger suffused her features. This  _kid_  had been playing with her after all! Who had put him up to this? After all this time, why would anyone want to?  
  
"Light sails haven't flown in years! You've had your laugh, you've seen my tears -!" She said bitterly. He moved forward, distressed as he shook his head and interrupted with that soft voice of his,   
  
"Forgive Me! You couldn't know. We left this planet -  _this planet_! Some thirty years ago." His hand reached out as he spoke and turned her towards the spaceport, moving her to a different vantage point on the hill and pointing behind one of the larger buildings behind which a very old and beat up ship was sitting. "My birthplace...my home." he all but whispered as she stared at the ship. They didn't make ships like that anymore. Not that large, nor that shape, with all those many struts and 'masts' that had been part of the sails the ship should have had but didn't.  
  
And then she understood. She fell to her knees on the hill and buried her face in her hands, the young man becoming alarmed and concerned. She felt disgusted with herself that she had automatically assumed the man was lying, playing with her...when he really never  _had_  seen Earth. If he'd been born on a light ship that had malfunctioned...it would take years for it to return to Earth. The amount of time would be dependent only on how far out they had managed to get before things went wrong. They'd have had to come back the hard way, time passing for them as it did on Earth. The young man had been born and raised on a ship - _that ship!_ \- and was likely all the world he knew. The things he said, the way he said them, she should have realized.  
  
The tears came as she knelt in the grass. Shame and relief and the beginning of a hope all intermingled together. The young man had put an arm around her shoulders as she shook, trying to give comfort, however awkwardly the action was to him. She finally pulled her hands from face and quieted. The young man continued to look at her in concern. He was close, but he still had to strain to hear her as she spoke...  
  
"They say the Gods love thievery. The stars from him, and him from me, still -" She paused as she continued to stare at the ship she had watched depart Earth thirty years ago with an aching heart, then spoke again, a little louder to the young man, "Tell your captain, I'll meet him here. Tomorrow morning," another pause, then a nod as if to herself, "Tomorrow morning, when the sky is clear."  
  
Clear of stars, she refrained from saying. The stars that had taken him way from her the first time. She could feel this was her second chance, and she wouldn't let herself lose him again. She wouldn't make the same mistake. Even if it meant braving her own fear of the stars, she'd go. But she wanted her first meeting with him in thirty years to be free of the stars that had stolen him from her.   
  
She couldn't bear to think of being parted with him again...and already the ache in her heart was diminishing at the thought of being reunited with him.  
  
A second chance.  
  
She wouldn't waste it.

 

 

 


End file.
